What Does it Mean to be Masorti?

I thought I would share some thoughts on what it means to be a Masorti Synagogue, for us (many of us) to be Masorti Jews. It’s a good Shabbat to be reflecting on and celebrating who we are -  Rosie, you and I – for me today is the nineteenth anniversary of my ordination as a Masorti Rabbi and, for you, it’s the first day of your life as a Masorti Jewish adult. And many parts of what you embody, and what you have achieved here today are intimately connected to our sense of ourselves as Masorti.

You’ve read from the Torah, you’ve taught us and you’ve led us in prayer – hugely central parts of our Jewish identity. Those words you read from the Torah are over 3,000 years old. The tune you used was fixed at least a thousand years ago.  You’ve committed yourself to our ancient traditions, and claimed you are a true Bat Mitzvah – daughter of being commanded. You’ve done things that have been done in Jewish communities for hundreds and even thousands of years.

But, as you alluded in your Devar Torah, there is something new in your being here, singing here, praying here and reading here as a young Jewish woman. I gave a sermon in November of last year on the occasion of the centenary anniversary of the first-ever Bat Mitzvah ceremony in America. And that young woman didn’t read from the Torah on that occasion. That took another few years.

For us in this country, I remember well the first meeting of what became the first egalitarian Masorti prayer community in Britain. It took place in my front room twenty-five years ago.

And it took another ten or so years for this community now, God help you all, under my rabbinic leadership, to welcome a woman onto the Bimah to read Torah. In Jewish terms, this has been a blink of an eye. And for many, still a radical and uncomfortable transformation in what Judaism looks like and sounds like; a radical transformation in, Rosie, you put it so well, who and how we count.

So what are we, as Masorti Jews? Are we conserving, preserving and maintaining. Or are we newly innovating and transforming.

On the one hand and on the other.

Well, and here’s a very Jewish answer – we’re both, but there’s a different dynamic I want to explore today, as opposed to the traditional verus the progressive.

I’ve mentioned this term Masorti – it’s a Hebrew word, made up of a three letter Hebrew root that has its most important mention in the story of the evolution of Judaism in Pirkei Avot. One of the greatest of our rabbinic texts.

Let me share the opening;

Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai UM’SaRaH to Joshua. And Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and Masruhah to the Men of the Great Assembly. 

You probably don’t need a rabbinic education to work out what masor means – it means to hand over, in this context to hand down through a generation. To be a Masorti Jew means to be involved in [how Judaism unfolds through generations, across time and space.

And to be a Masorti Rabbi means that, back when I was a Rabbinical student, I studied a lot of Jewish history – I studied how Judaism evolved and shifted and changed as it was passed down through the generations – Moses didn’t do it exactly like Joshua. The Jews of Temple times didn’t do it the same way as the Jews of post-destruction period. The Jews who ended up in Yemen didn’t do it the same way as the Jews who ended up in Germany, or Poland, or India, or … one of our members recently gave me a charming book about the Jews of Singapore.

None of us have ever done it quite the same as people who came before us, or will come after us, or are doing it in different parts of this glorious planet. 

To be in a Masorah is, David, Lara, I think a bit like being a parent – you want your child to find in the values you share with them values they hold dear, but you want them to do it their own way, in the context of a world that is changing fast, a world characterised by opportunities and challenges that have never been seen before.

The truth is that when you look for what Judaism really is, really has been for three thousand years, it’s less the fixed things that are the real markers, but instead the process, the unfolding, it’s a dance between a past that, for all it’s perfection then and there, needs to be re-embodied in every generation, always re-voiced, always re-newed. 

And in this generation – Rosie, the generation in which you are the newest adult member – it’s absolutely right and proper that Judaism sounds just like you, wanting to take you place, wanting to question, wanting to count, unapologetic in your leadership in public, liturgical circles.

I want to share two other insights, into this foundational text of Moses getting the torah and handing it on, the text with this foundational use of the word Masor, to transmit. It’s a learning I had really just this week, looking at some of the other, perhaps less famous appearances of the verb in the Rabbinic canon.

One is that, aside from this lovely tale of the unfolding of the traditional in Pirkei Avot, the use of the verb elsewhere in Talmudic literature always seems to refer to something being handed over and gone from the person who hands it over.

In Talmud Gittin A wicked person can be handed over to the Roman authorities – LeMasram. Handed over and gone.

And a person ready to accept martyrdom is prepared to hand over their soul to God. In Talmud Pesachim they Masru Atzman Al Kedushat haShem.

To be involved in the Masorah means to cede control of something, handing it over to a future that we, as the old folk in the room, know we cannot control, and cannot understand and aren’t going to be around to see. It’s an act of yielding. Again, this parenting analogy is, I think, right – it’s a bit like teaching a child how to ride a bike. You hold the unbalanced child up until they get going and at a certain point you have to let go otherwise they aren’t ever going to cycle themselves. That’s scary, but ultimately it has to be right, it's the only the values we have can survive in those who will come after us.

And the other piece is this. While this lovely text does indeed contain mentions of Masorah, the handing on of our tradition. It also uses the verb Kibel. It uses the verb Kibel lots, eight or nine times for every mention of the verb Masor

Kibel means to receive. Let me read on in that text,

Moses Kibel the Torah at Sinai and Masrah it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, they Masruha it and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. (2) Shimon was one the great assembly. Antigonus Kibel from Shimon. (4) Yose ben Yoezer and Yose ben Yohanan Kiblu from them (6) Joshua and Nittai Kiblu from them. (8) Judah and Shimon ben Shetach Kiblu from them. (10) Shemaiah and Abtalion Kiblu from them. (12) Hillel and Shammai Kiblu from them.

Masor-ing requires Kibel-ing. Handing something down through the generations requires a reception and a holding close.  I was thinking about antagonist pairs of muscles in the body – the bicep contracts, so the tricep extends.

That’s the tension in teaching a child to ride a bicycle, in trying to raise a child at all, in trying to be a Rabbi, in trying to be a Masorti Jew – we hand something on and it only works if there is a reception.

I think that’s why it’s so special to come to a BM, to feel, in Rosie, in any of this incredible cadre of upcoming New London adults, the warmth, the confidence and the strength with which you Kibel – receive and make your own this Masorah. 

May we never lose track of the remarkable thing it is to be part of this outstanding inheritance. And may those who came after us always make it their own, and receive it in order to pass it on in their own way, in their own time.

 

Shabbat Shalom